AI is not your friend. It’s not your enemy either. It’s just a tool. It’s the people behind AI who are your enemy: Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, whoever is running Google these days, and the rest. They want your personal information and they are very good at getting it from you.

As Almost Enough points out, their latest technique is to have their AI models badger you to link them to your email, calendar, bank accounts, files, and other repositories of your personal information. Today, that data is spread out. Your bank knows a lot about you. Google and Facebook know a lot about you. Giving this information to AI, however, brings it all together. Worse, it gives it to a machine that is designed to sift through data and find useful patterns. Like how to get you to spend your money or cast your vote.

They tell you their goal is altruistic. They want to make your life more convenient and easier. They want to do things for you, not to you. Right. And Trump wants to take over elections in the US to ensure they’re fair.

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt they don’t deserve today. They only want what’s best for you. Today. But what about when investors demand they do a better job of “monetizing” their assets? (And the reality is that we’re their greatest asset). Or when a wannabe dictator leans on them to push information favorable to the regime? These charlatans have already shown they’ll bend the knee when pressured. So if they have your data, they’ll use it.

But, you say, there is no privacy in 2026. There’s nothing we can do. But privacy is not an on-off switch. It’s a spectrum. You can’t stay completely private today, but you can be more private. Just ask your favorite AI to suggest more private alternatives to your current digital toolkit. Ask them how to turn on the privacy settings for those tools, including themselves. Yes, it means investing a few hours to make changes. But you don’t have to do it all in one sitting. Take your time.

Still too much of a hassle? Ask yourself, if Trump decreed that an ICE agent was going to follow you around, read all your mail, watch you scroll through your social media of choice, and audit your checkbook, would you accept it? Would you invest a few hours to stop him?

Don’t think of tech companies as innovative enterprises. Think of them as digital, snooping ICE agents. Because that’s what they are.

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